Development Phases

Generally, you can distinguish between two different phases of development, each with different requirements:

Initial development, such as feasibility studies, prototyping, early development. This tends to be both rapid and tentative. It is usually not appropriate to apply a strict version control at this stage, as it may not yet be possible to make relevant decisions such as the exact number and names of objects, and the dependencies are not apparent. Such development should be contained within development libraries. Version control and component tracking need only be introduced once the system is stable.
Maintenance development. Once a version of an application is in use, it is of critical importance that all modifications are carefully regulated. Full version control needs to be applied.